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I was in search of midnites also. York no longer carries them. I have used search engines and followed up on all listed suppliers on this site. I'm really curious as to why no one seems to raise them anymore.

When I first took over my father-in-laws hives he had midnites. They were very gentle and made plenty of honey. Unfortunately those hives perished in the winter of 2000.

I tried carniolans and starlines. The carniolans were very gentle. The starlines (the hive I had) were down right nasty.

There may be someone in California who has some. That's too far for me to have them shipped. Let me know if you find any east of the Mississippi. If I find any I will post it.

Both Starlines and Midnites are hybrids. Not hybrids of two different breeds but hybrids of two different strains of the same breed. This means the second generation often does turn mean, but the first one is very gentle and productive.

It shouldn't be to far to ship queens from California to East Coast locations. I work for the Airlines in addition to being a beekeeper. We receive queens from the Post Office all the time and within hours they can move from one coast to the other.

I know that they are hybrids but I just had the urge to try them. I have Caucasians and like them but I was going to try raising some queens this year and wanted to experiment with the Midnites. I've tried all places suggested but just canÂ’t find any.

If your intention is just to buy queens every year and run nice quiet hives, midnites are nice.

If your intention is to raise queens, I don't recommend getting a hybrid like midnites or starlines or buckfasts because the next generation is usually not nearly as good in all respects including gentleness.

If you get a couple of strains of caucasions from different sources and use one for drones and one for queen cells you will get calmer, nicer, more productive bees than starting with a hybrid.

Michael or anyone, If I planning to split two or three large colonies in the fall or spring and I want to raise queens for these new splits . I have buckfast bees now what queen would be to best to use. I will have all Buckfast colonies in May. So I should look into getting a queen that isn,t a Hybrid when I go to make my splits. Or even buy a package of bees with a queen and use this colony to make queens for the new splits? Darrell

There are many good breeds of bees out there. It depends on what you want to breed for and what you like, but the regular straight breeds that are usually rasied are Italians, Carnolians, Caucasians and (recently) Russians and Harbo's. I have only raised the Buckfasts, Starlines, Italaians, Russians and Harbos, but I've seen the Caucasians and the midnites (hybrid Caucasians). I liked them all really except the second generation of the Buckfasts and Starlines.

Personally I'm going to raise survivor feral bees. The ones I'm getting right now are Italian looking, but I hope to catch some of the local ones that are black and raise those. You can set swarm traps and maybe you'll catch some survivor bees.

I personally think (and I'm not that experienced with breeding bees, but have raised horses and chickens and pheasants etc.) that you want some outbreeding within the same breed to not get too inbred. So for example if I were to raise Italians, I'd get some queens from different breeders and use one line for drones and one for queen cells.

Those with more hands on experience in this matter can correct me if this is not the way things work with bee breeding, but that is my understanding of bees and genetics in general.

Since they are all basically Dadant bees I would think you could contact Dadant and Sons and find out who they authorize as dealers/breeders in Midnite bees. At least the Starlines and Midnites used to be their lines of bees.

Call York again and ask them what did they do with all of their midnight stock. You do not go from filling thousands of orders to nothing. They have to have some stock somewhere. Now thousands may seem like a lot but considering they produce over 30,000 queens a year it is not.

I did call York back and the lady said "no, we don't have any to sell". I asked if they purchased the Midnites or had their own. All she would say is that they are trying to find a beekeeper. I asked if they would sell a nuc or a hive, that I would really love to get some Midnites. She said no I'm sorry.

It is my understanding that yorks master breeder of the midnight breed. Died about a year or to ago. As they are just a hybrid, developed by dr cale a long time ago. My parner worked under him at the bee lab in baton rough la. I would giving all the trouble thatwe have today for get about some of the old genetics as they have been so deluted that they cant deal with the mite ar this terra resistante foulbrood.